tessa_murray•21d agoProlific Poster

Found my old apology letter to my grandpa from 2007

I was cleaning out my closet last Saturday and found a letter I wrote to my grandpa but never sent. It was about how I was too busy with high school to visit him at the nursing home in St. Louis. He passed away 3 months later from a stroke. The paper is yellowed now and the ink is smudged but I can still see every word I wrote... I guess I'm just sitting here wondering if it would have mattered if I sent it then. Has anyone else found old letters like this that hit different now?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia_gonzalez21d ago

grantp14 said something about the letter being for the version of me that needed to say it, but I really think that's backwards... I mean, if you never send it, what's the point of writing it at all? It's just you talking to yourself in a empty room, and that's not helping anyone. My grandpa died probably thinking I didn't care enough to even write a note, and that's on me for keeping it tucked away in a shoebox instead of mailing it. The act of writing might make you feel better in the moment, but it doesn't fix the fact that the other person never got to hear what you needed them to know. Sometimes I wonder if we talk ourselves into thinking the process is the important part just so we don't have to face how bad we messed up by staying quiet.

grantp1421d ago

Man, that's heavy. Do you think the letter was more for him or for the version of you that needed to say it? I always wonder if the act of writing it down does more for us than the person receiving it ever could.

elizabethmason21d ago

Oh definitely. Writing it down was cheaper than therapy, so I call that a win.